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Real hurthling! posted:Did we ever get the affinity map last year of which posters we were most like in taste? We had it in 2020 but i didnt see 2021 If you're referring to the principle component analysis (what IIRC the anime thread does) I made one in 2020: Microcline posted:Inspired by the anime thread I tried my hand at a Principal Component Analysis diagram. and cheetah7071 made on in 2021: cheetah7071 posted:I've done a bit of data exploration! First, I really liked the ordinations someone did last year--a kind of graph that shows how closely aligned different variables (in this case, votes) are with each other. There's a bit of a snag though--the way the math works, an ordination only really works if the data is kind of predictable. In this case, that would mean something like, if you know how someone cast three of their votes, you have a decent-ish guess as to how they cast the rest. But you goons are just too dang unpredictable for that to be true. In order to have a reasonable chance of guessing how you ranked Metroid Dread, I'd need to know how you ranked all nine of the other top ten games. Still, graphs are fun, so here's an ordination, with that big grain of salt. The way you read this is that arrows pointing in the same direction are correlated--if someone ranked one highly, they were more likely to rank the other one highly (but not by very much, because of the aforementioned unpredictability). The dots represent where all the goon votes fell in this view of the data. I'll probably be gathering data again this year so I can pretty easily do things like list all games with only one vote (it will be a long list though as last year this was 19.6% of all points cast)
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Dec 12, 2022 17:12
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 00:34 |
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I always look forward to the Something Awful GotY thread. It's a great way to see all the things I missed this year and now get to look forward to. Early Access First, shoutouts to a few titles that likely would be in my top 10 were it not for the fact that they're constantly getting better The Planet Crafter:  I really want to like incremental games. I really want to like survival games. I enjoy that feeling of exploring and mastering new systems. But most incremental and survival games seem to be tuned around being a 100+ hour forever game. While not yet finished, The Planet Crafter is a tight, 20-hour experience where you turn a barren rock into an earthlike paradise by exploring, building bases, and making numbers go up. For me the game sits in a goldilocks zone between Subnautica and Satisfactory. Subnautica has basebuilding, but little reason to do so. Satisfactory wants the player to build huge, sprawling factories, but doesn't give the player the necessary tools for that kind of scale. The Planet Crafter gives the player reasons to build bases in the regions they've discovered, but never on such a scale the building them becomes tedious. Mindustry:  About a year ago I described Mindustry in the management games thread as a kind of maximalist take on the factory game genre, one that throws in everything from tower defense, RTS units, a campaign map, multiplayer, and blocks that can launch other blocks, but as a result lacks direction and balance and can be difficult to read. In November v7 launched, bringing a new campaign with an entirely new set of blocks, units, and maps. And it addressed almost every problem with the original Serpulo campaign, down to the blocks using bolder, easier-to-distinguish colors and shapes instead of Serpulo's grey squares. Every map has a progression to it, where taking territory means more access to more space and resources for your factory which means being able to build new units and defeat the enemy base. And enemy bases, instead of being a line of boring pillboxes, build their units in factories just like yours, meaning that cracking a defensive chokepoint lets you godzilla rampage your mechanical spider through their fragile pipes and conveyors. Mindustry v6 was an interesting engine and a fun sandbox, but v7 is a great game. Honorable Mentions 16. Slipways (2021): An enjoyable economy game where you link up planets to generate points and resources. It's not hugely replayable and it falls a little short as the end score rating isn't related to the randomly generated map you're playing on, but developing some planets isn't a bad way to spend 20 or so hours. 15. The Forgotten City (2021): A lot has already been said about The Forgotten City. It's not as clever as it thinks it is, but it isn't without its charms and a-ha moments. 14. Monster Train: The Last Divinity (2021): On its surface, every change makes Monster Train more Monster Train. More opportunities for scaling synergies, and a clever system where you can choose when you take these bonuses (with the downside that enemies get boosted too). But looking deeper the expansion left the game in a fairly unbalanced state with a few dominant strategies and some units being unplayably bad. If the developers had put out 2-3 more patches the game would probably be back in my top 10, but it stops a little short of greatness. 13. AI: The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative (2022): In terms of the line-to-line writing, I honestly think AI2 is better than the original. There's a lot less Date and Aiba sitting in the car summarizing the exact scene you just watched. The somnium design is also improved, with significantly less moon logic. On the other hand, while the first game stands on its balance of grisly murder investigation, comedy, and heartfelt moments (and ability to roller coaster between these clashing modes), AI2 really only has the comedy. The crime scenes are bloodless (likely to avoid how the original game was condemned by an Adults Only rating in Japan) and the ability to do heartfelt moments is severely curtailed by the needs of The Twist. Now, I love the twist. It's incredibly dumb and contrived and I spent a minute straight laughing when I hit it. But far too much had to be sacrificed to achieve that. 12. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2019): In 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim there's a move where your giant robot fires several hundred missiles at once and it looks like stars are falling in slow motion as the ground is covered by AOE indicators. It's honestly not a very good move because the AOE is inconvenient and most of the missiles won't hit anything (and the ones that do won't do much because they're fairly weak and don't pierce armor). 13 Sentinels is kind of like that. It's firing a hundred plot threads at once and most of them aren't very engaging (especially the lategame romance arcs, which apart from 1-2 exceptions are universally terrible), but the spectacle of firing that many at once is a success. It's a game about being a teenager and watching giant robot anime and VHS tapes of Gojira and The Terminator and thinking that's the coolest poo poo every and being right that it is. 11. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022): Xenoblade 3 has the best main cast of the trilogy, the second best battle system after Torna, and some great moments (the Chapter 3-4 and 5-6 climaxes in particular). However, the size of the world is undermined by how empty/underdeveloped it is, traversal and combat are both slow, and the cast is mostly uninteresting outside of the main characters. The last two chapters are also clearly rushed, although the DLC might fix this like Torna did for Xenoblade 2. But if you want a 60-100 hour shonen adventure about using the power of friendship to punch scenery-chewing rubber suit monsters it won't disappoint. The List 10. Crystal Project (2022): Square Enix has dedicated millions of dollars and some very talented people to replicating the appeal of Final Fantasy V. All of them fell far short. Crystal Project also falls short, but it gets closer than I've seen anyone else get and does so as a solo developer using a couple of $50 royalty-free sprite packs. Explore the world, fight monsters, find crystals, and combine classes. The voxel terrain might seem like a cost-saving measure (and it probably was), but as you find more and more connections you begin to appreciate the world as a connected, "honest" space. It has its flaws--the tuning is a bit too MMO-y (i.e. putting abilities being balanced over abilities being fun to use), classes require investment to use (vs. FFV classes requiring investment to use when in another class), and I'm tired of games using "it's an MMO" as an excuse plot. It might not be FFV, but what is? 9. The Last Spell (EA):  The Last Spell is a roguelike tactical RPG where every night you use 3-6 heroes to defend your city from waves of undead. As a TRPG I think it's a huge advancement over the traditional, Final Fantasy Tactics-style "your dudes and the other dudes march towards each other and trade blows until one side runs out of dudes", which often ends up just being a slower version of a traditional JRPG. The tactical space is much deeper, as you have to balance killing enemies efficiently with covering a wide area, and there are many different ways of doing so. Longbows can cover a huge amount of the map at the expense of damage efficiency, druids can spread poison among densly packed groups, and swordfighters can move across multiple sides using momentum to fuel massive single target damage. And it's all incredibly readable, as all calculations are shown in the menu and skills/effects all have very readable icons with a common design language. The games larger flaws are on the roguelike side. Instead of going with a more standard system of upgrades (where the upgrades you pick are carried through the until the end of the run) items have levels from +0 to +5 and early game choices are quickly replaced. The equipment system also means that there's a tendancy to run out of things to upgrade and plateu, especially on the longer maps like Lakeburg and Elderlicht (Elderlicht as a whole suffers from being far longer than the game's systems are intended to support). 8. Tower Tactics Liberation (EA):  I think there are essentially two types of roguelikes, or at least a spectrum between two types. The first is the Slay the Spire type that's tightly balanced such that the player is never more than a few bad decisions away from death and there's no upgrade or synergy to escape this. In the other type the player can construct some kind of wild engine that turns the game into a parade of one-ups and flashing lights. (Vampire Survivors is similar, but I think my problem with it is that it doesn't feel like my actions are causing the flashing lights) I think of this as the "comfort food roguelike" and TTL is my current comfort food roguelike. 7. Against the Storm (EA):  The game is tagged as a "city building roguelike" but what I think it's closest to is a european-style boardgame. It's a satisfying process of building an economic engine that uses raw materials and labor in increasingly efficient ways. It's balanced such that the player running a powerful engine ends the game (via victory points) and the difficulty grows appropriately with each ascension level. 6. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection (2022): Now my friends won't have to wonder why my designs suck despite having 100 hours in a game 5. Norco (2022): It's this year's Night In the Woods/Kentucky Route Zero/Umurangi Generation, and one of the first of a new generation that use a Disco Elysium-style text scroll. Set in the poisonous shadow of But the scene that sticks with me most is when LeBlanc visits his neighbor Duck, who is alone in his house, slowly dying of cancer.  What do we do when there aren't going to be any more good days? 4. Inscryption (2021):  Inscryption is an escape room. Inscryption is a incremental game. One where all of the verbs come from card games. It sacrifices being replayable for hundreds of hours for being a 10-hour rollercoaster of rule setup and player mastery. It is also surprisingly funny and consistently nails the timing. The caveats are: 1. There is a metaplot (everything regarding the live action segments). It is bad and doesn't get resolved. You're better off ignoring it. 2. If you think the game is ending, assume it's ending. The game ends with a lot of things unresolved and if you go in distracted by the metaplot you'll miss an otherwise good ending. 3. Pentiment (2022):  how did that work out for you socrates Goons are going to be spilling a lot of ink about this game here so I'm just going to say that the game gave me a dialog malus with the justification "Gave an annoying opinion on Pliny's Natural History" 2. Dwarf Fortress (EA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekq3TDPznGI It's hard to imagine a world without Dwarf Fortress. There might not be Infiniminer, Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio (and Satisfactory, Factory Town, and Mindustry), Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, or Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Possibly no Fortnite, although that's even more tenuous than the others. I might not be a gamer, a goon, or a computer toucher. Would similar games have happened eventually due to material circumstances? Probably. But if gaming had a legends mode Tarn Adams and his artifact would be at the top of a landslide. In 2022, Dwarf Fortress is still the best in its category. The failed first generation of "DF Clones" demonstrated that you can't compete with its pace or its 15-year head start. You can focus on one specific aspect and making a more game-y game around it (as Minecraft does with its block building or Oxygen Not Included does with its physics model), but no game simulates as much as Dwarf Fortress does. 1. Library of Ruina (2021):  I picked up Library of Ruina during the Christmas sale because two people mentioned it in the 2021 thread, finished it in February, and it's sat at #1 in my goty2022.txt since then. And I'd go so far as saying that Library of Ruina is the best JRPG* of the past 20 years. *"Is Ruina a JRPG?" is a complicated question but I'd say that I went in expecting Slay the Spire and got something more like Xenogears There isn't any "fight the boss to continue the cutscene". Cutscenes are used to set up the encounter (explaining why your opponents have chosen to risk death in the library), then the climax occurs during the gameplay which is appropriately challenging, because gaining stronger pages means killing people with stronger pages. There is typically no denouement cutscene because you've killed the people you were talking to. Much like PSX-era JRPGs there's plenty of blood and horror, although these are often campy (you fight cannibal chefs about 30 minutes in and it only gets better from there) and it never strays into cruelty or mean-spiritedness. You are expected to feel sympathy with The City's denizens (well maybe not the cannibal chefs) as most are risking death for a paycheck to avoid the certain death of not paying rent. It's not a story of saving the world but of kicking a big interconnected society and how the shockwave reverberates, where in New Weird style this interconnected society is made of mundane economic relationships in a bizarre world. It's a game where the gameplay tells the story and the climax of the story takes place in the gameplay. If a character is hyped up they will be as strong as the game suggests, being difficult to bring down (and a huge boon once you kill them and steal their clothes). In one sense there are too many mechanics, but in another these are a benefit. My favorite moment in Xenoblade 3 is when the villain, standing in the background of a scene, demonstrates what a cool anime dude he is by nonchalantly slicing machine gun bullets out of the air with his sword. In Ruina, countering bullets with your attacks isn't just a thing that happens in a cutscene (and it does happen in a cutscene, because Ruina is cool like that) but a core mechanic you can master and perform. And aesthetically it's one of the freshest games in a while, with a wide range of designs that nonetheless feel like they stem from the same world,  whether it's wolf-headed mob hitwomen  or janitors doing their jobs in their corporate swag baseball caps and standard-issue body armor with the company logo stenciled on   or elite fixers dressing for success with the suit and coat  or some hellraiser poo poo I'll admit it's not a game for everyone. It's 100 hours long, and there aren't really any "turn your brain off and chill" sections in there. The UI isn't entirely up to dealing with the game's mechanical complexity, especially the effect of statuses and passives (which get more numerous as the game goes on) on combat rolls. But there's no game that's stuck with me more this year or that has had more influence on how I think about JRPGs as a genre. 10. Crystal Project 9. The Last Spell 8. Tower Tactics Liberation 7. Against the Storm 6. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection 5. Norco 4. Inscryption 3. Pentiment 2. Dwarf Fortress 1. Library of Ruina
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Dec 17, 2022 02:34
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CottonWolf posted:I’m just going to make a square figure, with every poster combination having a block and that block being coloured blue to red depending on how similar their lists were. It won’t be hugely fancy, but you’ll be able to find your row and compare how close you were to every other person. PM me if you want the vote data in a csv with all of the game names standardized
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Dec 25, 2022 16:07
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Tulip posted:2. Pentiment Clearly you didn't take Latin during character creation
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Dec 26, 2022 18:52
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Runa posted:If this means Endwalker made it into the top ten in a gap year I'm gonna laugh FFXIV has been in the top 10 every year except 2018, which was a bit of a weird year as the GOTY thread was still finding its legs
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Jan 7, 2023 22:46
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Snooze Cruise posted:yeah i really prefer tristrat's toolbox style to what FFT and TO does. i like customization too but all your units still have to unique like in troubleshooter or something to have me on board. i say this but i am also the only person who put symphony of war in their top 10 which is closer to the FFT or Orge variety... ChrisBTY posted:10) Fortnite
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Jan 7, 2023 23:38
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Anno posted:Jesus Christ @ those scores lmao. Elden Ring: Most Game of the Year 20** Elden Ring got 1199 points, which is 10.3% of all points cast. The runner up, Pentiment, had 2.54%. In 2020 Hades won with 7.46%. In 2021 Final Fantasy XIV won with 5.47%. To put into perspective just how crazy 10.3% is, if every voter ranked Elden Ring as their #1 pick this year it would have won 18.64% of all points.
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Jan 8, 2023 00:09
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So another statistics post. This year there were 217 votes (up from 196) casting a total of 11,636 points (up from 10130). 38.2% of all points were awarded to games that didn't make it into the top 75. 18% were for games only listed by one person. This is holding relatively steady from 37.5% and 19.6% last year. For the second year running the Most Generic Goon is Barreft, who's top 5 is (again) exactly 7 places from aggregate ranking. Barreft posted:5. Pokemon Scarlet The top overperformers ELDEN RING (#1), with 136 votes (almost 2/3rds of all voters) at an average rank of 2.2 PENTIMENT (#2), with 38 votes at an average rank of 3.2 XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3 (#4), with 31 votes at an average rank of 3.5 TRIANGLE STRATEGY (#5), with 30 votes at an average rank of 3.8 DISCO ELYSIUM (#17), with 16 votes at an average rank of 3.0 As Rarity pointed out, PERFECT TIDES is also of note, making it on the list despite only having three votes due to having an average rank of 1.67. The underperformers are a bit more interesting, as it has a number of games that would have placed much higher if all listings were treated equally NORCO (#30->#24), with 16 votes at an average rank of 6.3 TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER'S REVENGE (->#54), with 7 votes at an average rank of 7.1 TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III (#66->#46), with 8 votes at an average rank of 7.0 POTIONOMICS, with 5 votes at an average rank of 8.0 CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 (->63), with 6 votes at an average rank of 7.7 STRAY (#15->#9), with 28 votes at an average rank of 6.1 GENSHIN IMPACT, with 4 votes at an average rank of 8.8 FORTNITE (#70->#47), with 8 votes at an average rank of 7.3 GRAN TURISMO 7 (->#37), with 10 votes at an average rank of 7.0 DEATHLOOP (->#64), with 6 votes at an average rank of 8.0 THE BIG CHART (more pink = more years)  I might try to do some kind of network based model later in the week, but one has to balance posting with gaming.
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Jan 8, 2023 03:29
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 00:34 |
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CottonWolf posted:Games that appeared in only one list and were rated top: I think this is the games that got 10 points rather than the games with only one #1 vote. For instance I ranked The Last Spell 9th and sirtommygunn ranked it 3rd which gives a total of 10 points. (how did so few people play it in 2022, the year of the SRPG?) The list I have is: code:
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Jan 8, 2023 18:10
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